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Johnston-Forbes v. Matsunaga

The Washington Supreme Court issued an opinion on August 28, 2014 in Johnston-Forbes v. Matsunaga, Cause No. 89625-9, addressing the admissibility of biomechanical engineering expert testimony in an automobile collision case. In that case, Matsunaga rear-ended the rental car in which Johnston-Forbes (an LPGA player) was riding. Johnston-Forbes had been sitting in the back seat of the car between two car seats holding her two young daughters. Their car had come to a complete stop for a red light. Johnston-Forbes was leaning forward and twisted back and to the left, facing one of her daughters, when the car was struck from behind by Matsunaga’s car.

The evening of the accident, Johnston-Forbes began experiencing headaches and pain and stiffening of the muscles in her neck. The pain continued. While the pain in her back eventually resolved, the pain in her neck did not. Four years after the accident, Johnston-Forbes was diagnosed with a herniated disc in her neck. She did not return to the LPGA tour.

Johnston-Forbes sued Matsunaga, who admitted striking Johnston-Forbes’s rental car but denied causing Johnston-Forbes’s injuries. Before trial, Matsunaga identified Dr. Allan Tencer as a biomechanical engineering expert. Dr. Tencer has a doctorate in mechanical engineering and was a professor in biomechanical engineering at UW for 23 years. Johnston-Forbes moved in limine to exclude Dr. Tencer’s testimony, arguing he was not qualified as an engineer, that his opinion lacked foundation, and that in viewing photographs he could not account for Johnston-Forbes’s precise body position at the time of impact. The trial court limited Dr. Tencer’s testimony by excluding the repair bill for Johnston-Forbes’s rental car and by instructing Matsunaga to tailor Dr. Tencer’s testimony so as not to refer to the repair bill, but denied Johnston-Forbes’s motion. At trial, Dr. Tencer testified generally about the forcing acting on the two vehicles and Johnston-Forbes’s body during the collision. Johnston-Forbes testified that one year after the accident, she was involved in a golf car collision in which she flew forward and hit her chest on the steering wheel. She also admitted she had been in a snowboarding accident in 2009. The jury returned a special verdict of “no” on the question of whether Matsunaga’s negligence proximately caused Johnston-Forbes’s injuries. Johnston-Forbes appealed, arguing the trial court erred by denying her motion to exclude Dr. Tencer’s testimony. The Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court accepted review and affirmed.

Before reaching the merits, the Supreme Court revisited the general framework governing the admissibility of expert testimony. It then noted that it was not remarkable that trial judges have sometimes allowed biomechanical engineering testimony, and specifically Dr. Tencer’s testimony, and sometimes excluded it where the trial courts are given broad discretion to determine the circumstances under which expert testimony will be allowed. The Supreme Court affirmed because the trial court followed the analytical framework required by the evidence rules and thus performed its proper gate-keeping function in the particular case. The concurring opinion agreed with the majority’s articulation of the evidentiary framework that trial courts are to utilize, it warned that the decision is not an endorsement of Dr. Tencer or the use of biomechanical engineers in automobile collisions. Instead, trial courts must perform a new fact-specific inquiry concerning the admissibility of an expert in every given case.

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